The Desired Experience

[Ominous]

@runescryer said in The Desired Experience:

It's a rule of science: Credit goes to the first one to publish the observation, not necessarily the first observer.

Yeah, but it's also been called out a lot as well. It's such a "known thing" that no one gets credit for coming up with it.

[23quarius]

My desired experience is a collaborative improv experience where the players are comfortable with making shit up on the fly about what's going on and about each other. Running NPCs, confrontations, calling the cops on themselves since they're playing the NPCs which include the lady who calls 911 on their hijinx, the mutual confidence and respect where you can just posit, comfortably, that something behind the scenes happened between your characters that you didn't actually discuss but you know their humor and their character well enough to do it. Like you can just say to them (or they to you) in character, "Hell no, we're not going to that party, the last time you took me anywhere you drained the tequila bottle and dragged me on the dance floor!" without pre-negotiating. It's a space of trust and familiarity and creativity that is my desired experience.

ETA, I also really enjoy when people do dumb, irresponsible shit ICly and look forward to the consequences blowing up in their face. Because that tends to require a mindset of trust in the GM, collaboration, and good sportsmanship, so you're on a good gaming experience when you screw up and go "Whoops oh shiiiit" and are excited to see what happens next, rather than dreading how this is gonna screw over your character.

[Tinuviel]

@23quarius said in The Desired Experience:

Like you can just say to them (or they to you) in character, "Hell no, we're not going to that party, the last time you took me anywhere you drained the tequila bottle and dragged me on the dance floor!" without pre-negotiating.

That's literally my favourite thing.

So few people are open to it lately, in my experience, though. They instantly assume it's something plot-related, or a lie, or whatever. People seem so uptight and unwilling to go with the flow.

[23quarius]

@tinuviel Big mood. I love it. So you're welcome to do it to me :D. If I really think whatever was posited wouldn't happen, I'd just OOCly say "Hey actually let's change X detail but the rest of it, 10/10"

[il-volpe]

There's probably some "hierarchy of needs" we could complicate this with.

[Tinuviel]

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

There's probably some "hierarchy of needs" we could complicate this with.

If you bring Maslow into this normal human conversation I will set you on fire. Fuck Maslow.

[Carma]

This post is deleted!

[Ganymede]

@Carma

@faraday said in The Desired Experience:

Most Sandwich Clubs I've encountered (including the ones I've personally been a part of) are not 100% insular. They may prefer playing with each other, but there's enough tangential encounters that anything you give to them has a chance to spill out to the rest of the game -- especially if the thing you give them leads to some kind of public event, or requires support from the science department, or whatever.

This is really important.

Sandwich Clubs don't usually start because people want to ignore the rest of the game. I think that Sandwich Clubs come about because people can only make so many sandwiches and want to share them with people they are familiar with or, at the least, are not likely to be stalked or harassed by. (Let's not pretend this doesn't happen.)

I am happy to give my sandwiches to whoever wants a sandwich, but I only have so many sandwiches. I prefer to give my sandwiches to people who will not demand all of my sandwiches because I like to share them and interact to do so. When I end up having to give all my sandwiches to one person I feel sad and unbalanced. I don't last long.

So the people I let into my Sandwich Club are the sort of people who understand that I only have so many sandwiches to give. Nonetheless, they like my sandwiches and I like to share them. If others want to come and enjoy my sandwiches, that's great too; however, as more people come to try the sandwiches, the amount of sandwich to share becomes smaller and so sometimes it is less enjoyable.

As long as people respect how many sandwiches a person can make, I think the gaming experience for all will improve.

[Pyrephox]

I tend to think the ideal MU* structure player-side tends to be a large number of smallish Sandwich Clubs with some overlap. It's sort of what IC factions tend to be trying to create. People can't play with everyone on the game - even if you wanted to, there just aren't enough hours in the day to give equal distribution to everyone. But a group that doesn't play with ANYONE else does tend to become insular and isolated from the game at large. What I really like, is groups where, hey, maybe there's five people who play together a lot - but everyone of those five have at least a couple of people outside of that group who they also play with a lot. And THOSE people have about four other people who they play with a lot, but each of those people have a couple of people outside of that group the play with - so the whole game is connected by a few degrees of separation, even though most people play most of the time with four-to-six people.

I think Sandwich Clubs tend to get toxic when they start trying to police who people play with outside the group. Either by outright 'I won't play with you if you play with X' or the more subtle (not MUCH more subtle, but...) attempts to monopolize playgroup members, or egging them on to criticize people outside the group (so that they can later go back and tell those people oooooh look what X said about you and isolate the club member further).

[Arkandel]

@pyrephox said in The Desired Experience:

I tend to think the ideal MU* structure player-side tends to be a large number of smallish Sandwich Clubs with some overlap.

I feel this is a manufactured model that we, as players, have been gradually taught to follow. Many tabletop RPGs are party-based and that has introduced the 'Sandwich Club' as an integral part of how we play. World of Darkness games are notorious for this since in some spheres literally the first thing most players do is search for a pack/cabal/etc. Lords and Ladies similarly follow a similar paradigm as they integrate into factions (Houses, etc) to play politics.

I think Sandwich Clubs tend to get toxic when they start trying to police who people play with outside the group. Either by outright 'I won't play with you if you play with X' or the more subtle (not MUCH more subtle, but...) attempts to monopolize playgroup members, or egging them on to criticize people outside the group (so that they can later go back and tell those people oooooh look what X said about you and isolate the club member further).

Frankly I think this is a symptom of toxic people rather than the model itself. It's a perfectly human trait to want to be included, play mostly with your friends or like-minded individuals, etc. But leveraging that to exert pressure on other players to get your way or exclude specific others is a whole different ball game.

[Derp]

@arkandel

Frankly I think this is a symptom of toxic people rather than the model itself. It's a perfectly human trait to want to be included, play mostly with your friends or like-minded individuals, etc. But leveraging that to exert pressure on other players to get your way or exclude specific others is a whole different ball game.

And yet we have dozens of people in this hobby that these rules apply to all the time, and we never bat an eye. We even encourage it. VaSpider. Custodious. A handful of others it doesn’t take much effort to find on these boards. And they were not always in the out group. Spider in particular never tends to be, and was almost always a concern for a relative minority of players.

Saying this behavior is toxic is hugely unfair. It is almost always warranted in some way, based on the very real experiences of people who have clashed badly enough to break off contact entirely and be very wary of possible avenues of crossover.

[Tinuviel]

@derp I think the thing that makes the behaviour toxic is when it isn't warranted. But nobody external to the group or individual making the choices gets to decide on just cause. There's a border between punishment and abuse, and I'm not qualified to judge that.

[Ganymede]

@tinuviel said in The Desired Experience:

But nobody external to the group or individual making the choices gets to decide on just cause.

Except staff.

I am wholly supportive of staff who require interaction when a player has a PC that is part of integral to the plot or IC social structure. If a Sandwich Club is in positions of importance, it is reasonable for staff to step in and have them make a choice: relinquish your positions of IC authority or interact with others. And staff should step in under those premises.

Otherwise, we're all just in the peanut gallery.

[Tinuviel]

@ganymede said in The Desired Experience:

@tinuviel said in The Desired Experience:

But nobody external to the group or individual making the choices gets to decide on just cause.

Except staff.

I am wholly supportive of staff who require interaction when a player has a PC that is part of integral to the plot or IC social structure. If a Sandwich Club is in positions of importance, it is reasonable for staff to step in and have them make a choice: relinquish your positions of IC authority or interact with others. And staff should step in under those premises.

Otherwise, we're all just in the peanut gallery.

None of those things run counter to what I said. Staff can take mitigating actions, but they can't decide that another player's reason for excluding others is unwarranted.

[Arkandel]

@ganymede said in The Desired Experience:

And staff should step in under those premises.

Undeniably. But it's also so easy for malevolent players to fly under the radar for some time simply by being otherwise quite active - just with the 'right' people - or even muddying the waters by creating he-said she-said situations.

So you, as staff, might look at Joe. You don't know him. All you can see is that he's often in scenes, but do you really keep track who that RP is with? And if Jane complains that he dodges RP from her, yet you're aware he plays with others, is it possible their calendar was just not compatible for a bit there? After all even if he's holding an important position he can't play with literally everyone.

Not everyone reaches Spider or Custodius levels of notoriety.

[Ganymede]

@tinuviel said in The Desired Experience:

None of those things run counter to what I said. Staff can take mitigating actions, but they can't decide that another player's reason for excluding others is unwarranted.

I guess not, but implicitly what I said does. Regardless, because of who you are and who I am, I will amend.

Regardless of what justification a player may have for not interacting with the game at large, staff can and should take action to protect the game, including, but not limited to, requiring players to either give up positions of IC power or interact with others regularly.

[Sunny]

@arkandel

It's a problem better solved by game design, in removing situations in which one person specifically needs to be consulted. It doesn't matter WHY Joe is avoiding Jane; he might have good reasons, he might have shitty reasons, and it literally doesn't matter. Joe should be allowed to avoid Jane if he doesn't want to play with her.

If that is going to create a bottleneck or a situation in which Jane can't get something done, change that. Give the second in command the power to handle whatever it is that Jane needed to get addressed. Not only does this help Jane, this helps your entire game.

Nobody should ever be in a position in which the game requires that they deal with a specific individual. No game should ever build into their requirements a bottleneck in which one single person is required to get anything done.

This goes doubly so when you have to start determining whether or not Joe's reason is "good enough" to allow for him to avoid Jane. He wants to avoid Jane. THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH.

[Sunny]

There is a wide gulf between "someone in a position of pretendy-fun-time power is not playing with anyone but these four people" and "someone in a position of pretendy-fun-time power is avoiding X and Y specifically" and treating the latter like it's the former does no one any good EXCEPT for that particular breed of abuser who likes to bring the staff hammer down on their victim as a "consequence" for setting boundaries.

[Pyrephox]

@sunny said in The Desired Experience:

@arkandel

It's a problem better solved by game design, in removing situations in which one person specifically needs to be consulted.

Honestly, this is better design ALL AROUND. Remove bottlenecks wherever possible, especially ones where you have to go through one player or staff member. Some have to be kept, but anything where you can /spread that out/, do so.

Not just because of toxic people, but because of adult human beings. People have work. People have different time zones. People log on to play fun scenes with their friends, not do administrative work for companies/factions/organizations that don't even exist. Being an 'IC Leader' should not really mean having OOC responsibilities to organize and shepherd other people's play time, and it doesn't mean that a 'non-leader' PC should have to get every damn thing they want to do rubberstamped, either.

Bottlenecks kill involvement. Having to wait weeks or months to hear from the One Person who can move you forward or even say 'hey, you can try this' is anti-fun.

[Arkandel]

@pyrephox I think the only requirement there should be that characters who hold certain key positions should be active. As in, in general. Using whatever metrics for that staff decides are adequate and appropriate - which is a separate conversation altogether.

After all if I'm playing the Prince of a city that's kinda of a big deal. It's a cool position. And it's fun to explore the dynamics of what happens when your neonate/Primogen from a different Covenant/werewolf gets to sit across the table from the Prince.

If I play him rarely or choose to do so very selectively then perhaps staff should have a chat with me. I completely agree with @Sunny that no one should have to play with someone they just don't want to, but if they hold certain positions they should be active in general. Because functional authority aside, playing with the Sheriff instead isn't quite the same.